Aligning a float:left div to center?

I want to have a group of images display horizontally across the page. Each image has a few link below it so I need to put a container around each image/link-group.

The closest I have gotten to what I want is putting them in divs that float:left. The problem is I want the containers to align center not left. How can I achieve this.

Solution 1:

use display:inline-block; instead of float

you can't centre floats, but inline-blocks centre as if they were text, so on the outer overall container of your "row" - you would set text-align: center; then for each image/caption container (it's those which would be inline-block;) you can re-align the text to left if you require

Solution 2:

CSS Flexbox is well supported these days. Go here for a good tutorial on flexbox.

This works fine in all newer browsers:

#container {
  display:         flex;
  flex-wrap:       wrap;
  justify-content: center;
}

.block {
  width:              150px;
  height:             150px;
  background-color:   #cccccc;
  margin:             10px;        
}

<div id="container">
  <div class="block">1</div>    
  <div class="block">2</div>    
  <div class="block">3</div>    
  <div class="block">4</div>    
  <div class="block">5</div>        
</div>

Some may ask why not use display: inline-block? For simple things it is fine, but if you got complex code within the blocks, the layout may not be correctly centered anymore. Flexbox is more stable than float left.

Solution 3:

try it like this:

  <div id="divContainer">
    <div class="divImageHolder">
    IMG HERE
    </div>
    <div class="divImageHolder">
    IMG HERE
    </div>
    <div class="divImageHolder">
    IMG HERE
    </div>
    <br class="clear" />
    </div>

    <style type="text/css">
    #divContainer { margin: 0 auto; width: 800px; }
    .divImageHolder { float:left; }
    .clear { clear:both; }
    </style>

Solution 4:

Just wrap floated elements in a <div> and give it this CSS:

.wrapper {

display: table;
margin: auto;

}